


Making Promises

by imagineteamfreewill



Series: Making Promises [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dean Winchester is Reader's Parent, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-14 04:11:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17501324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imagineteamfreewill/pseuds/imagineteamfreewill
Summary: The reader is sixteen-years-old and Dean is her father, and she's meeting him for the very first time. This is loosely inspired by the song "First Words" by Stephanie Smith.





	Making Promises

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally published on my tumblr account of the same name on November 23rd, 2014 and edited on June 5th, 2017.

You pulled into the truck stop, parking your small car into the space nearest the door. Glancing out your window, you quickly slipped the small silver knife you normally carried in your purse into your boot. You didn’t need the extra baggage today—goodness knows you already had enough.

Climbing out of the driver’s seat, you walked up the sidewalk and into the small diner that adjoined the convenience store. The thick smell of greasy bacon and stale coffee hit you like a brick wall, causing your stomach to churn. It wasn’t the smell that caused your sickness, however. You had dealt with much worse than that—dead bodies, blood, and vomit were common occurrences in your life. Looking around, you immediately focused on the tall man who sat alone in the corner booth, nursing a coffee. His eyes drooped and his hair was messy. He looked like a man who didn’t care. He was the cause of everything that had gone wrong in your life, and now you hesitantly made your way towards him, stopping at the edge of his table. You could see his eyes flicker towards you, his right hand shifting from the seat of the booth to his leg, where you knew for a fact he was keeping a knife.

“Hey,” you mumbled, clearing your throat and feeling decidedly unsure of yourself. “Um…” He looked up at you and squinted.

“Whaddaya want, kid? Where’re your parents?” he asked in a gruff voice, looking you over. Clearly, he figured you’d wandered away from your parent’s car while they refilled or used the restrooms in the store. It was almost dawn, and you’d drive four days to get to the truck stop. The whole time you’d been driving, all you could think of was the sharp, witty remarks you’d make when you finally came face to face with this man, but now all you could do was let out a soft, nervous laugh. The man raised a single eyebrow at you, waiting impatiently for your response.

“Dean Winchester,” you finally replied, putting a name to a face. The name rolled off your tongue, it felt natural. A look of alarm flashed across Dean’s face and his eyes narrowed.

“How do you know who I am?” The knife was in his hand now, but it was still under the table. You clenched your hand into a fist, resisting the urge to grab your own weapon. You knew this was going to happen, and you mentally scolded yourself. Not everything could be solved by facing off.

“Well, see that’s the thing. I’m your daughter.”

The noise in the diner seemed to dim as if the entire room was waiting to hear the Winchester’s response. You heard his sharp intake of breath as clearly as if he were standing beside you instead of sitting in front of you.

“I don’t have a daughter” he hissed, his voice quiet. You shook your head, chewing on your lower lip and taking a tiny step back. “How? Who?” The questions came out just as quiet, but rapid fire.

“My mother’s name is Jennifer. We live in Chickasaw, Illinois. A tiny town, not well-known.” When you said your mom’s name, Dean’s eyes gained an element of softness, something you hadn’t seen in a fellow hunter’s eyes in a long time.

“Jennifer,” he hummed, a small smile on his face. “Yeah, I knew your mom.” Dean looked down at his coffee cup, holding it between two hands. He reminisced for a moment, and then an expression of panic replaced the smile.

“Why are you here? Is she okay?” He reached into his pocket and pulled out some crumpled up bills, throwing them onto the table and beginning to rise. You held out your hands, gesturing for him to sit back down onto the faux leather seat. A bit nervous, you explained that while your mom was, for the most part, alive and well, you’d run away. Dean looked even more confused when you’d finished, and you slid into the opposite side of the booth, folding your hands on the laminate table.

“She’s got a boyfriend,” you explained. “He’s not very nice to her or to me, and I didn’t like him. So I left and came here. Mom had this locket that she always wore, and when I turned sixteen she gave it to me. There were pictures of both of us inside, and I figured that it was my father, so I scanned the photo into my computer and looked it up on the police database.” You shrugged. “And that’s how I found you.” Dean’s eyebrow had been creeping its way up to his hairline the entire way through your story, and now it stopped.

“So let me get this straight,” he murmured, pausing for a moment to collect his thoughts. “You ran away from home, but beforehand you hacked into the police database and found my information, and then you came here to this crappy diner to tell me I have a daughter—you—that I never knew about.” He ticked these things off on his fingers as he parroted back the information. You nodded. “I don’t even know your name.”

“Y/N Winchester,” you told him in a soft voice. He gave you a look of surprise.

“Your last name is Winchester?” You could tell he hadn’t expected your mom to give you his last name. In fact, you were surprised yourself. You nodded. “Well, Y/N,” Dean continued, “I gotta give you credit. You made it far, considering you made it all the way here to North Carolina without dying or getting caught by the police, but I’ve gotta take you home.” His last statement made you blink.

“What? No! I can’t go home!” you exclaimed, a bit too loudly. The waitress standing behind the counter at the cash register looked up. Lowering your voice, you repeated yourself, this time more insistent. “I can’t go home, Dad. Er, Dean.” Calling him ‘Dad’ felt weird, so you decided to stick with ‘Dean.’

“Mom wants to marry this guy, and I don’t think I can take a whole ‘nother year of him!” you cried.

Your mom’s boyfriend, Thomas, was downright repulsive. He was an alcoholic with a serious beer belly, and he treated your mom like trash. She was a nurse at a small hospital near your house. She worked in the neonatal part of it, delivering babies. She had rough days, sure, but she always came home with a smile on her face because she was doing what she loved. When your mom had first started dating Thomas, he had been doting and kind. He loved her, and he showed it. But a few months ago, it was as if he had turned into a different person. He became rude, obnoxious, and demanding. Your schedule, which was packed tight already with school and work, became even more difficult when your mom picked up another shift to earn the extra money needed to care for him after he moved into your house. You cooked and cleaned, caring for the small house you had lived in all your life.

The only refuge you had was your nursery-turned-bedroom. Inside of it, you did whatever you wanted. But what they didn’t know was that inside those walls you were developing skills that Dean and his younger brother already possessed—hacking, fighting, gun-cleaning, shooting, lying, and stealing. Everything necessary to become a hunter. You knew all about hunters and the supernatural things that roamed the earth because of a few strange people who had come to your school after the deaths of several classmates. They had said they were FBI agents, but you knew the badges were fake. You trailed them, catching them in the act of salting and burning a corpse. They explained to you about what they did before leaving town.

After you’d finished telling Dean all of this, his mouth set itself into a firm line. “You  _cannot_  become a hunter, Y/N. I may not have much pull in your life seeing as I’ve missed out on the last seventeen years, but if you do anything for me, anything, don’t become a hunter.” Something in your father’s voice clicked with you, an emotion you had heard coming from downstairs as your mom’s boyfriend yelled at her—desperation. Dean was begging you not to be something you’d always wanted to be. Becoming a hunter would have been the ultimate escape from a life you’d never quite fit into, like a puzzle piece that someone was trying to push into the wrong puzzle.

“Why not, Dean? Why can you be something and I can’t?” Anger bubbled up and you kicked the table leg, shaking the table and spilling Dean’s coffee.

“Not here,” he murmured, shaking his head. He grabbed your arm and pulled you up out of the booth. The two of you left the restaurant silently, replacing the thick air and quiet dining noises for frigid snow-filled air and the sound of trucks coming and going. You wrenched your arm away from your father.

“Why? Explain this to me, Dean. Why should I do what you say? I’ve known you for fifteen minutes! Fifteen minutes! You didn’t even know I existed until now, and now you want me to go back to this horrible life I’ve been living because you say so?  _No!”_  You jabbed your finger into his chest and he took a step back.

“Because,” Dean took a deep breath. “Because you’re my daughter, and as much as you don’t like it, that means I’m responsible for you. I have to take care of you, and you’re not safe if you’re a hunter. Hell, you won’t even be happy.” Dean looked up at your face. You set it into a stony mask, trying to stay indifferent to the words he was saying, but the truth was that he was a better dad than you had ever imagined. Your entire childhood had been filled with birthday wishes and late-night thoughts about your dad, and now that you’d met him you realized how foolish you had been. No wishes could compare to what you had now.

“You can’t be a hunter, Y/N. I won’t allow it.” Dean enunciated the words, staring you straight in the eye. You could tell why he was feared by everything that breathed; he wasn’t one to be loose with demands. You knew that he would hold you to this, that he meant what he said. Swallowing, you opened your mouth to speak and then thought better of it. You turned your back on Dean and exhaled slowly, letting the anger flow from your stomach and your brain into the cold night air. Dragon’s breath, as your mom had always called it, escaped from your lips in a white fog, and you focused on it, watching it dissipate into nothingness. You ran your fingers through your hair and slowly turned to face him again.

“If I can’t be a hunter, at least let me come with you. I can’t go back now.” You raised your chin and squared your shoulders, trying to appear as big and confident as you wished you felt. Dean seemed to consider this for a moment.

“And what about your mom?” 

“She’ll miss me, but… With me gone there’s one less person she had to worry about taking care of. Maybe if she doesn’t have to worry about protecting me she can focus kicking that scumbag Thomas out,” you replied, your voice quiet.

“Okay,” Dean agreed, sighing. “You can come with me, but with three conditions. One, you don’t hunt. Period. There’s no secret night-hunts, no coming with me and your uncle, and no research. Nothing. Got it?” You nodded and he went on. “Two, you go to school. You’re going to finish high school completely. Graduation and all. I’d like you to go to college, even if it’s the community college nearby. And three, you need to call your mom and let her know what’s going on. If she doesn’t agree, I’m sending you home.” You nodded again, this time less eager. “Do you have a cell phone?” Dean asked. You shook your head and he reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out a phone. He handed it to you without a word and then stepped away, clearly wanting to give you some privacy.

Closing your eyes, you took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly. If your mom didn’t agree to Dean’s plan, you’d have to go back and live with her, and there was no doubt in your mind that she’d keep you from hunting now that she knew. Slowly, you dialed her number and put the phone to your ear. Your mom answered on the third ring, and when you said it was you, you could hear her breathe a sigh of relief. In the background, you heard Thomas asking who it was, and your mom replied with, “It’s a telemarketer.” Your heart dropped when you heard the note of fear in her voice.

After you’d explained what was going on and that you were okay, your mom agreed to you going with Dean, albeit reluctantly. The call ended soon after, with her making you promise to call again soon. Dean walked over from where he was standing.

“Okay?” he question.

“Okay,” you told him, nodding. That was four promises you had made already today, and you silently made another one, promising to make the most of the new life you’d been given, starting now.

“My car’s over there.” You pointed at the car nearest to the diner’s door. Next to it was a black 1967 Chevy Impala, which you soon discovered was Dean’s.

“Where are we going?” you asked, following him over to where you were parked. He turned his head, his green eyes glinting with happiness.

“Home,” Dean grinned. The two of you got into your cars and you pulled out of the lot after him. Sunlight was just beginning to creep over the horizon as you pulled onto the highway, and if it were any less cliche, you might have laughed at the dramatic scene yourself.


End file.
